Streaks of Prose in Her Veins
by Aimlessly Unknown
Summary: Rose Tyler loved poetry; that is what the Doctor remembers.


He can't even see straight anymore, the pressure behind his eyes mounts greater and greater until everything ahead blurs into a mass of colour and shape that don't quite mean anything. All he knows is that there are a lot of pinks and yellows in the mix – the blending of hues and shades until it's a blur of colour streaming past him and he's falling, falling, falling into the abyss. All he can tell is that _forever_ doesn't last nearly as long as it should. Sudden, startling, reality crashes into his mind and makes him choke on his own delusion. He notices the pain in his spine. Rolls his shoulders back and feels the pleasant crack of vertebrae that sounds just a little louder than his hearts breaking; for a moment he can drown out the sound of his misery with the breaking of his body.

He hates his body. It is a weak and frail thing, all sinew and curve but no muscle; not strong enough. He will never be strong enough, for all his victories there are a thousand more defeats following him like ghosts. But there is an image, a memory, a mirage – she liked his body. Used to tell him all the time – his memory – with poetry; surprising to him, the memory liked poetry. Oh, how liked to recite it to him with that voice of hers. Hers; the pronoun of a female, but was this memory a female? Was there a warm body to accompany this memory? Perhaps it was.

'_It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows_', she liked to say that – tell him something sweet and soft, prose and meter falling off of her lips like honeyed drops of dew. He liked to hear her say it. He would like to hear her say it once more.

But who is she?

He feels the block on his mind, the thing that shifts and curls as he tries to dodge around it and find the answers. He needs the answer but he will never know why. Asks the TARDIS why it is there. She doesn't answer, her lights dismally twinkling. He notes that it is not the lights that answer him, but the darkness. The swelling abyss that fills the spaces and hides the answer behind a veil of shadows but he rejects the answer, for it cannot be as dark as to hide (_though wise men at their end know dark is right_).

Suddenly he tumbles, the abyss below rushing up to meet him and passing him by as if he was not worthy of being caught, and the ground cannot stop itself from catching the lost debris and garbage that falls to it. He groans to the grating and something inside shakes itself. He recalls so much warmth and the floor is cold. He recalls pain. He recalls loss. He recalls wind too powerful to be wind.

He recalls agony.

He recalls Rose.

RoseRoseRoseRose, the word filling his lungs with pain and his hearts with air – or perhaps it is reversed but he will not ponder it. Instead he fills his time by whispering Rose to the air. He says it until his mouth cannot bear the taste of pain in it. He whispers it to a pillow. He mutters it to the wall. He screams it to the Universe and damns every person curled in their lover's arms. He wails to the gods, demanding her return because she was _his_.

Now he feels so empty (_live coiled in shells of loneliness_). He wants her back, wants to speak to her, and wishes he could see the blue sweater on her arms. Wishes he could see her before she fell, plummeted away from him.

Rose, he says and the pain – his eternal wound – reopens, Rose, oh my Rose, there's air. Rose there's air where we are, in my chest, in the atmosphere. Rose there's air in the spaces between your fingers, where my hand fits. Rose there's air between you and the lever. Rose don't reach across the air to the lever, you silly silly girl. Precious girl, let it go offline; we'll beat the Daleks and Cybermen somehow. Rose, Rose please don't let go. Rose there's air between your body and the grips. Rose hold on to the lever. Hold on until there's no air between you and the rubber of the lever. Rose – Rose come on, listen to me. I'm a Doctor. The Doctor. Rose. Rose there's air between you and the lever. Rose you're falling but it's OK because I'll save you somehow, someone will save you and you'll be with me always. Forever, right? Right?

Rose?

No air. None. All has rushed from his chest and he is left with a void, a cavern in his body that caves in on itself and crushes him. All colours in the world have faded to shades of white. To a wall – six inches of drywall that somehow means an entire Universe away.

He is alone. Startlingly alone and wishing to hold her once. Wants to see her smile. Her laugh captured in a bottle to listen to whenever he so chooses. He wants his Rose. Promised her to go and see Ezra Pound. Promised to have Ezra write a poem for his Rose because Rose loved Ezra; but not more than she loved the Doctor because she loved the Doctor with all the love in her heart; single heart, not enough, not nearly enough (_more than one holds steadier, more than three falls to folly_).

He goes back to meet Ezra. She is curved and older with spidery fingers and dark, empty eyes. She would make Rose laugh delightedly and Rose would, in turn, make her happy and lifelike in her joy. Rose would do to Ezra what Rose did to the Doctor all the time.

So Ezra promises a lonely man a single gift to the flower that has wilted. Names a poem _A Girl_, but it doesn't work because the Doctor wants to yell. She was so much more; she was eternity and hope in a body too frail to last. Nothing can capture his Rose (_she is dying piece-metal, of a sort of emotional anaemia_).

All the world could end in fire (_some say in ice_) but the Doctor would rather it just end.

And take his agony with it.


End file.
